


Ouroboros

by orphan_account



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: BAMF Harry Potter, BAMF Tom Riddle, Dark Harry Potter, Evil Twins, Harry Marchosias Riddle is Harry Potter, M/M, Possessive Tom Riddle, Riddle at Hogwarts Era, Slytherin Harry Potter, Tom And Harry Are Twins, Twin Bond, Twincest
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-08-16
Updated: 2017-01-07
Packaged: 2018-08-09 06:21:28
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Underage
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,609
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7790011
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fighting a battle in a room full of mysterious and dangerous time artifacts is not a good idea. Harry Potter is thrown back in time, reborn as Tom Riddle's twin brother, with no memories of his life before. Growing up together in an orphanage during war, the two boys face the world together as a united front. Will the unconditional love of another person be enough to save the magical world from a future of despair, or will the magical world have two dark lords to contend with? Only time can tell which way the story will go.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Beginning

** **

**Ouroboros**

**Spider Cider | Elijah J. Sage**

**Chapter One ~ The Beginning**

* * *

Magic is a funny thing. A sentient power thrumming through all.

In a dusty, dark, room, during a battle in a dangerous place, something very wonderful and terrible happened all at once. A thousand prophecies came tumbling down off their shelves, exploding all the way through a to room of time and magic imbued artifacts. There was an explosion of magic so powerful that, for a moment, nothing but magic exsisted. Time tore itself to ribbons, and magic used that explosion of powerful artifacts to take a single precious soul from one time, and place it in another

Magic really does have a funny sense of humour sometimes. No one can deny that.

**~~**

Winter. Snow falls down in an angry blizzard, sticking to the frosted windows and white blanketed ground, and leaving long icicles and high piles of freezing ice crystals. The wind howls like a hungry beast, whistling and rattling at windows and doors. The thick clouds cover the ink black sky, so no stars nor moonlight can peak down to the stormy land below.

The hour is far too late for any sane person to be up, and yet that does not mean that no one is. Mrs. Emaline Cole, the matron of Wool's Orphanage is in the kitchen getting a glass of water, cursing the raging weather outside for her inability to sleep, when she hears the knocking. At first she thinks she must have imagined it, for surely no one could weather the storm outside, but then it comes again, more insistent and urgent than before. The woman hastens to the front door, night clothes wrapped tightly around herself, and finds herself standing face to face with a girl a few years younger than herself.

She is not a beautiful lady, this girl. In fact, she is quite ugly and atrocious to look upon. The woman stands shivering in the doorway with her palid sickly complexion, sunken in starved face, heavily pregnant belly, mangled and frozen brown hair, and dark eerie eyes. She is dressed in only rags, and blood runs down her legs. Mrs. Cole almost shuts the door in her face, despite her pregnant belly and bloodied legs, for she does not wish to associate with homeless tramps, and she can hardly feed the children as it is, but then the girl speaks.

"Please."

This one word is all she says, in a cracked desperate voice, and Mrs. Cole finds herself suddenly ushering her in out of the cold, as if urged by magic to save this girl and her children from certain death. The matron goes to wake up the midwife, for luck would have it that she had been over to check upon one of the children before the storm got to be so bad, and gathers warm water and towels.

For a while, all they know is her screams of pain as she struggles to push. She is too weak, from hunger and sickness, and the midwife worries she will not survive to give birth to one, let alone both children. She manages to talk a little through her pain; enough to have them promise to name the first Tom Marvolo, after her husband and father, and the second Harry Marchosias, after her husband again, and her great-grandfather, with the surname Riddle; and to express her hope that they look like her husband had. There is a lot of blood when the first baby comes, screaming his way into the world, and the girl dies not even four seconds after he comes. Ninety three seconds later his brother joins the world when the midwife cuts him out of his mother's still warm corpse. Immediately after he is given to Mrs. Cole, waiting patiently with his brother in arms, both stop screaming, eerily silent and staring at eachother with wide intelligent eyes.

The twins are settled down into a cot after they are fed, and the girl is covered in white sheets, to be burried when the storm lets up. In the eerie silence, laying in her bed later that night, Mrs. Cole reflects on the two newborns, and their strange mother. Such a sad ending, to die so young. She never even told them her name.

**~~**

Dumbledore knocks cheerfully on the cracked painted door of Wool's Orphanage, a genial smile upon his face. The dilapidated building is foreboding to look upon, and the peeling paint and dusty windows almost give it a haunted sort of feel. Dumbledore would rather be in his office, drinking tea and sucking on lemon drops, a muggle candy he only recently discovered, but unfortunately there is much business to do in this sad little place. He is there to introduce a pair of muggle born twins to the world of magic, after all, and that is a wonderful thing to be tasked with. He loves the glee on their faces when they find out magic is real.

The door opens to reveal a small girl of about fifteen years old, by his estimation, with a rather dumbfounded look on her face, and he smiles cheerfully at her. "Hello, My name is Albus Dumbledore." He greets. "I believe I have an appointment with the matron of this fine establishment, Mrs. Cole."

"Oh, um yes." The girl nods, blinking a few times. "Follow me, sir. She's in her office."

He follows after the girl patiently, taking in the surroundings as they walk. It is a plain place, just as I'll kept as the outside, with mismatched furniture scattered around. He see some children sitting around, some playing games, and others staring at him with expressions reminiscent of what he would expect should they see a giraffe climbing the stairs in his place. The girl knocks on a door and led him in when the matron beckons them in.

Dumbledore sits down in the empty chair front of a woman in her late thirties, with a pair of beedy eyes, and a bullish face. She gapes silently at him for several moments, before he clears his throat to introduce himself. "Good morning. My name is Albus Dumbledore. I sent a letter requesting an appointment and you kindly invited me here."

She stares a little more before clearing her throat and nodding. "Right. Yes, well... um what can I do for you?" She asks in a stressed professional voice.

"I am here as I told you in my letter, to discuss the Riddle twins, and arrangements for their future." He smiles.

"Are you family?" Mrs Cole asks hesitantly, eyes a bit narrowed.

"No, I am a teacher." Dumbledore tells her. "I have come to offer them a place at my school."

"What school's this, then?" She crosses her arms over her chest.

"It is called Hogwarts." Dumbledore answers.

"Hogwarts, eh? Odd name for a school." She mutters. "Can't say I've ever heard of it before. How come you're interested in Tom and Harry, then?"

"We believe they have qualities that we are looking for." He replies calm and patient in the face of her scrutiny.

"You mean they won a scholarship?" She asks, eyes ever more narrow, lips tightening. "How can they? They never applied to one before."

Dumbledore grins wider,more friendly than ever. "Their names have been on our school registry since birth."

"Who registered them? Their parents?" She persists.

There is no room to doubt that Mrs. Cole is an inconveniently sharp woman. Dumbledore discreatly slips his wand out of his pocket, and hands her a piece of paper from her own desk.

"Here," Dumbledore says, waving his wand once while passing her the paper, "I think this will make everything clear."

Mrs Cole's eyes slide out of focus and back again as she gazes at the blank piece of paper, and an oddly peaceful expression slides over her face. "That seems perfectly in order." She says placidly, handing it back. Her eyes fall on a bottle of Gin and two glasses that had defiantly not been present before. "Err, may I offer you a glass of Gin?" She asks primly.

"Thank you very much." Dumbledore beams at her.

Mrs Cole, as she makes it quite clear, is no novice when it cones to the bottle. She pours them both generous glasses, and drinks hers in one gulp. Smacking her lips together, she smiles at Dumbledore for the first time, and he does not wait to press his advantage.

"I was wondering if you can tell me anything of Tom and Harry's history." He says. "They were born here at the orphanage, correct?"

"Yes they we're." Says Mrs. Cole, helping herself to more gin. "I remember it clear as anything, because I'd just started here myself. New Year's Eve and bitter cold, snowing, you know. It was a nasty night. And this girl, not much older than I was myself at the time, came staggering up the front steps. Don't know how she managed to get here through the blizzard. Well, she wasn't the first girl, and we took her in. She had the twins within the hour. She died giving birth to the first, we had to cut the second out of her. A gruesome death, so sad. We never even learned her name." Mrs. Cole nods, a vacant far off look on her face, and helps herself to another generous gulp of gin.

"Did she say anything before she died?" asks Dumbledore, curious."Anything about the boys' father, for instance?"

"Now, as it happens, she did," Mrs Cole says. She seems to be rather enjoying herself now, with the gin in her hand and an eager audience for her story. "I remember she said to me, 'I hope they look like their papa,' and I won't lie, she was right to hope it, because she was no beauty. She made us promise that ger first boy was to be named Tom, for his father, and Marvolo, for her father, and his brother was to be named Harry, also after his father, and Marchosias, after her great-grandfather. I know, funny names aren't they. We wondered whether they came from a circus. Then she said their surnames were to be Riddle like her husband, and she died soon after that. Well, we named them just as she'd said, it seemed so important to the poor girl, but no Tom, Harry, Marvolo, Marchosias, nor any kind of Riddle ever came looking for them, nor any family at all, so they stayed in the orphanage and they've been here ever since." She pours herself another glass, gulps, and then says, "They're funny boys, those two."

"Yes," says Dumbledore. "I thought they might be."

"They were funny babies too." She laments. "They hardly ever cried, you know, only when we separated them really. And then, when they got older, they were ... Well odd."

"Odd in what way?" He presses carefully.

"Well, they -" Mrs. Cole pulls up short, the rosy hue her face had taken on from the drink seeming to evaporate, and there is nothing blurry or vague about the inquisitorial glance she shoots at Dumbledore over her gin glass. "They definitely got a place at you school, you say?"

"Definitely," says Dumbledore.

"And nothing I can say can change that?" She insists.

"Nothing," says Dumbledore gravely, his smile slipping only just.

"You'll be taking them away, whatever?" Mrs. Cole presses.

"Whatever," repeats Dumbledore.

She squints at him as though deciding whether or not to trust him. She apparently decides she can,because she leans back, chugs her glass, and says in a sudden rush, "They scare the other children."

"You mean they're bullies?" asks Dumbledore.

"I think they must be," says Mrs. Cole, frowning slightly, "But it's very hard to catch them at it if they are. There have been incidents, nasty things..." She trails off. Dumbledore does not press her, though he is beyond interested. She takes yet another gulp of gin, and snacks her lips. "Billy Stubbs's, another orphan, had a small white rabbit and... well, Tom said he didn't do it, and Harry... well he didn't say anything, just stood there with an emotionless look on his face, holding Tom's hand in a silent show of support... and I don't see how they could have done it, but even so, it didn't hang itself from the rafters, did it?"

"I should think not, no." Dumbledore sighs.

"But, I'm jiggered if I know how they got up there to do it. All I know is the twins and Billy had argued the day before. And then" Mrs. Cole took another drink "on the summer outing...we take them out, you know, once a year, to the countryside or the seaside...well, Amy Benson and Dennis Bishop were never quite right afterwards, and all we ever got out of them was that they'd gone into a cave with the twins. They swore they'd just gone exploring, but something happened in there, I'm sure of it. And, well, there have been a lot of things, funny things... much odder than that..."She looks at Dumbledore, "I don't think many people will be sorry to see the backs of them."

"You understand, I'm sure, that we will not be keeping them permanently?" says Dumbledore. "They will have to return here, at the very least, every summer."

"Oh, well, that's better than a whack on the nose with a rusty poker," says Mrs. Cole with a slight hiccup. Dumbledore gives her a sympathetic look. "I suppose you want to see them, then."

"Very much." He smiles.

**~~**

She leads him up the stairs, and then knocks on the first door in a long corridor before opening the door. "You have a visitor." She says. "This is Mr Dumberton, sorry, Dunderbore. He's come to tell you ... well, I'll let him do it."

Dumbledore enters the room as Mrs. Cole all but runs out, closing the door after her. The room is bare except for a single bed, a bare desk with two chairs, and an old wardrobe. Two identical boys are resting on one of the beds looking at the same book. Dumbledore stares at them. They are both tall for eleven years old, with black hair so dark no light seems to touch it, and pale skinned with mismatched eyes. There are some differences. One boy has a killing curse green left eye, with his right eye such a dark shade of grey it is almost black, while the other has his eyes swapped. The boy lying on his stomach has messy longer hair, while the one lying on his side has shorter neater hair. Both boys narrow their eyes slightly as they observe Dumbledore. There is an uncomfortable moment of silence, and then Dumbledore smiles.

"How do you do, Tom, Harry?" Dumbledore asks, walking forward and holding out his hand.

The boys hesitate. They both look at eachother, a silent conversation going on between them, and then they close the book and sit up as one. The neater of the twins takes his outstretched hand, and then the other. Dumbledore draws up a chair from the desk, and sat beside the bed they were sitting on.

"I am Professor Dumbledore." He introduces.

"Professor?" They repeat as one.

"Is that like a doctor?" Asks the one with messier hair coldly.

"What are you really here for?" The other narrows his eyes while he speaks. "Did she get you in to have a look at us?"

"No, no." says Dumbledore, smiling calmly, despite feeling quite unsettled by the eerie boys. They frown as one, hands clasped together.

"I don't believe you." They say.

"She wants us looked at." The neater twin accuses, the more talkative of the two it seems."Tell the truth!"

The last three words are spoke with a ringing force that is almost shocking. It is a command, and it sounds as though he has given such a command many times before. Had Dumbledore not had his Occlumency shields up, he might have almost done it, at that. They both glare at Dumbledore as though trying to scare him into telling them what they want to know. The two identical glares hold so much malice for eleven year olds that it is frightening. Finally they stop glaring and they both look warily at Dumbledore, who had not stopped smiling at them.

"Who are you?" The neater one asks.

"I told you. My name is Professor Dumbledore" he smiles. "Would you be Tom or Harry, dear boy?"

"Tom." he answers curtly.

Dumbledore makes a note in his head so he can tell the boys apart easier. Tom is the neater twin, and his left eye is green. Harry is the quieter one with the grey-black left eye. He smiles warmly. "Tom, Harry, I work at a school called Hogwarts." He tells them. "I have come to offer you a place at my school...your new school, if you would like to come."

Tom opens his mouth to speak, but snaps it shut when Harry tugs on his sleeve. The twins stare at eachother, and the tension slowly leaves Tom's shoulders. It is very intriguing to watch, and Dumbledore thinks they must be having a conversation in their heads.

"Magic." Tom whispers. Dumbledore blinks. Tom faces him. "Hogwarts is a school for people with magic?" It is both a question and a statement all at once.

"That's right." Dumbledore says. "May I ask how you know this."

"Harry sometimes just knows things." Tom says, pride in his voice. "We can do all sorts of things."

"What is it that you can do?" asks Dumbledore with a smile.

"All sorts," breaths Tom. A flush of excitement was rising up their necks.

"We can make things move without touching them." Harry says.

"We can make animals so what we want them to do, without training them..." Tom speaks .

They look at each other then Tom says. "We can speak to each other from different rooms. Things like that."

"You are going to accept my offer?" Dumbledore asks, unfazed by their admissions, and a bit relieved that they did not admit to harming anyone, but also worried the same.

"Yes." They both said.

"Good. At Hogwarts, we teach you not only to use magic, but to control it. It is likely you have ... inadvertently, I am sure ... been using your powers in a way that is neither taught nor tolerated at our school. You are not the first, nor will you be the last, to allow your magic to run away with you. But you should know that Hogwarts can expel students, and the Ministry of Magic, will punish lawbreakers still more severely. All new wizards must accept that, in entering our world, they abide by our laws." Dumbledore speaks.

"Yes, Sir." The twins says simultaneously. There is silence, and then the twins frown and say, "We haven't got any money."

"That's easily remedied," Dumbledore smiles, drawing a leather money-pouch from his pocket. "There is a fund at Hogwarts for those who require assistance to buy books and robes. You might have to buy some of your spell books and so on second hand, but-"

"Where do you buy spell books?" asks Tom. Harry takes the heavy money pouch from Dumbledore without thanking him, and starts counting the heavy gold coins with an odd expression on his face, as if calculating the amount.

"Diagon Alley," says Dumbledore. "I have your list of books and school equipment with me. I can help you find everything-"

"You're coming with us?" asks Tom while looking at the coin in Harry's hand.

"Certainly, if you-" he is interrupted.

"We don't need you," the twins say together, finally looking up from the coins. "We're used to doing things for ourselves sir. We go round London on our own all the time. How do you get to this Diagon Alley? Sir?" They add, catching Dumbledore's eye.

Dumbledore tells them exactly how to get to Diagon Alley and onto the platform, and as he is leaving, Tom speaks. "Sir, I ca-"

Harry grabs his wrist and shakes his head. They stare at each other in silent conversation, then Tom huffs and nods. Dumbledore stands there for a moment, wondering what Tom was about to say.

"Yes?" He prompts.

"We we're wondering what the conversion rate is, for the coins." Harry lies. Tom nods.

"Ah yes." Dumbledore smiles. "In decreasing order of value, the gold are Galleons, the silver are Sickles, and the bronze are Knuts. There are seventeen Sickles in a Galleon, and twenty-nine Knuts in a Sickle, meaning there are four hundred ninety three Knuts to a Galleon. There are approximately five pounds to a Galleon."

"Thank you, sir. " they say. Dumbledore stands there silently for a moment, then he merely nodded his head to the two boys and left.

**~~~~~~**

**A/N: In demonology, **Marchosias** is a great and mighty Marquis of Hell, commanding thirty legions of demons. Coincidentally, GenderlessPerson also uses this name for Tom Riddle in her fanfic "Silk Roads". However, that is not the reason I chose the name. I was reading a demonology book and loved the name, and then had to spend an entire week trying to figure out where I had heard it from. Anyways, enjoy. C:**


	2. Author Note

**_Author Note_ **

* * *

* * *

* * *

Hello! I am so sorry for the wait! Everything just sort of went tits up for a bit there. I lost my job, and then I couldn't pay for internet or my phone, so I had no ability to write. I am working on updates for everything right now. Sorry for the long wait.

~ Elijah. 


End file.
